Well the month has just finished and while 5 Simple Rules has only been up since the 8th July I thought I’d report on my progress so far.

As of today I have sold 10 copies.

10 copies that I’m actually pretty thrilled with given it’s my first month (indie authors usually notoriously have low numbers in the first few months) and that it’s a book on the stock market (not exactly a hot topic right now).

$18.34

(Less the stupid 30% tax that they’ll take out before they send me a cheque because I’m not a US citizen and haven’t bothered to fill out all the IRS tax forms yet – but which I can still claim back through the Australian tax system under foreign credits so am wondering if I really will bother about the forms anyway).

Ahh do not give up grasshoppers because like I said this is my first month. Plus it’s the only book I have up on Kindle so far (actually that’s not entirely true – I just uploaded a romance erotica short story under a pen name – just to see – too early to tell about this genre yet though).

The real key to making money with the Kindle is to have lots more books up. So this month I’ll be working on the second of my simple rules books. This one will be more a general personal finance topic rather than a specific stock market title. I’ll continue with the stock market books once the market heats up again (which it will –interest in stocks is cyclical and when the economy recovers there will be renewed interest in the topic again – at which time my book will be waiting patiently in the wings ready to say – hiya there big boy).

But the second book will help give me more exposure and should boost sales of the first one as well.

Ask any successful author and they will tell you that an extensive backlist is your key to indie riches. So basically – write more books!

Of course, as an internet marketer, I ALSO know the secret to selling more books is a good highly targeted blog.

Currently my brand new blog has received 139 visits. I have no idea at this stage how many of these visitors were converted to sales yet, but anyway 139 is still quite low. Still not to worry – that’s 139 potential book buyers that I didn’t have a month ago!

Although more promising is that I’m ranking (albeit not very highly yet) for investing in the stock market. My plan is to increase my rankings for this term through internal linking and key outside backlinks over time.

My best ranking post is the one I wrote on avoiding penny stocks – a topic I feel quite passionately about – although I suspect most people searching for information about investing in penny stocks want to know HOW to do it, rather than be told it’s not a good idea. Ca sera sera.

It will also be interesting to see how the short story I wrote a million years ago does. I found it while cleaning out my filing cabinet. I wrote the story when I was much younger, and obviously much less un-inhibited seeing that it has a rather raunchy sex scene. It’s very short at just over 2,000 so I’ve priced it at just 0.99 cents.

I’ll let you know how it goes when I get the reports next month although I’m not sure if I’m ready to become a well known erotica writer! LOL. I prefer my nonfiction work. But it if does sell well then I may have to rethink things a little.

Talk soon rockstars!

Tracey xx

If you liked this article and think others would benefit from it then I’d love if you would like it on Facebook, tweet it on Twitter OR plus it on Google. Or not, no biggie.

Woohoo I’m an author! OK technically I was already an author; because I’ve got two awesome traditionally published books on bookshelves here in Aus – you remember bookstores right, that place that had lots of paper books (paper books? That’s soooo last year).

But as of a few days ago I’m now an INDIE Author too … ooooh *cue the clapping soundtrack and audience oohing and aahing and then suddenly screaming in horror – what have you done Tracey, your writing career is over!

Don’t you just love the cover? It was designed by my brilliant graphic design / illustrator partner (nepotism is alive and well). His brief was that I wanted something that looked both professional but simple but also stood out amongst the rest of the finance books already on Amazon. Plus it had to look good really small (at Amazon thumbnail size). I think it’s awesome. You do too don’t you? Knew it!

So anyway, now that it’s live on Amazon & starting to get distributed via Smashwords, what’s next?

(You mean I have to do more than just write a book – I actually have to market it too? Craaaazy.)

Set Up Your Book Blog

Well of course the first thing is to set up the blog to help market it. Here’s the blog for 5 Simple Rules. There isn’t much there yet – I’ve not really started the marketing plan full force – but its coming – all it good time my friend.

As I plan on doing a series of finance books using the ‘simple rules’ theme – this website will host them all and grow over time. Obviously they will all stay within the same niche ‘finance’ because I might as well stick with what I know best – saving, investing and stuff. (Bank manager: Really Tracey?).

Setting up a blog is relatively simple and I really recommend you go ahead and get yourself a self hosted blog with a domain name that you own. That way you can say and do whatever you like on it without the fear that it might one day get ‘disappeared’.

I’ve been setting up a new blog for nearly every book I write and then a few others to support my writing blogs. That way I can build up a network of sites that can interlink between each other to gain a bit of authority within the search engines.

But I can also use them to network and link out to other people, which brings me to …

Oh and speaking of twitter – I know I promised part two of my twitter marketing post because I ran out of time last week (I’ve got small kids damn it – they need some attention every now and then otherwise people in suits tend to turn up at my doorstep), but I still plan on getting it out soon. Promise ‘k?

Pricing Strategy

Now price was a difficult one for me, because I only had data from hearsay and what other indie authors were reporting. The general consensus is that a good price is a low price. But then you have the other side of the fence who argue that you shouldn’t underestimate what someone might pay for the right book (more so for nonfiction than fiction).

In the end I struggled between two prices. $2.99 and $4.99. I tossed around the pros and cons of both but finally decided on $2.99 for two main reasons. One was that I’m an unknown in the U.S. so I would like people to take a chance on the book, and two, it still is quite short (just over 15,000 words) so I didn’t think that the higher price would represent good value for the length.

But since I’m in control of the process now I can always experiment with price later down the track.

Your 10% Amazon Sampling

Amazon allows its readers to download approximately 10% of the first part of the book to preview before they purchase. That means you had better be sure that your first chapter is AWESOME. You also need to make sure that they get a good sampling so it’s a good idea to move a lot of the front matter like About the Author, Other Books, and Dedications etc to the back of the book.

I personally wouldn’t put anything more than your title, table of contents and copyright in the front so readers can get a bigger sample of your writing. I feel this really will help sell more books.

And while all of your books should be good, I would say that the first chapter should be exceptional to really sell the book.

Professional Looking Cover

I’ve already mentioned the cover briefly above but having a good looking cover really is crucial to selling your book. You’ve heard the old saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” right? That’s bogus. People DO judge a book by its cover so it better look professional and not like it was done by your thirteen year old nephew.

You also should check that the title is readable at a teeny tiny size, since Amazon uses thumbnails on its search pages and you want to grab the reader’s attention quickly.

My rule is to keep it simple and if you can afford it, hire a designer (or have babies with one like I’ve done).

Write More Stuff

Of course the biggest marketing strategy is to write more books! The more books you have available the more likely people can find you. So my second book will be started very soon. Hopefully I’ll have it out within three to four months.

That is unless they have another True Blood marathon on Foxtel over here. Oh Eric .. purrrrr.

I’ve been reading a lot of books lately about author marketing strategies and one particular method that keeps popping up is how authors can use twitter to increase their books sales. John Locke himself said in his latest book “How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!” that Twitter was a major part of his marketing strategy.

So how can we use Twitter ourselves to effectively market our books to the masses? Is Twitter really a viable strategy?

It can be – but only if used correctly.

Coming from a marketing background, I know the right (and wrong) ways to use Twitter having used it successfully myself. In this blog post I’ll give you some tips and facts so that you can get your message out, build a fan base and still use Twitter etiquette.

Your Name Is Your Brand

The first thing that people see about you on Twitter is your name. Most people use their real names as their twitter profile and with good reason – when you are an author, your name is your brand. People generally don’t follow someone named WriterMom345 but will follow Dean Wesley Smith because he has created a brand out of his name.

Even if you use pen names it’s a good idea to use a real name rather than a cutesy slogan as your Twitter profile. I use my real name @traceyedwards as I’m the brand for my books.

Your Profile Picture

The best author profile pics are usually a headshot of you with a plain background so that your face is easily recognisable. Don’t put a full length picture of you at the beach because when it’s shrunk down to mini size it can be difficult to make out. Likewise don’t use a logo or avatar. Only businesses would use logo’s as their Twitter pic, not people. And don’t use the default egg icon either. No-one follows egg icons.

I use a similar picture across nearly all of my marketing platforms to have a consistent image. This is my pic.

Your Profile Bio

Twitter allows you to create a few lines about who you are and lets you add your website/blog address here as well. This is a chance for people to find out more info on you so you need to create something compelling about yourself and what you do.

Try and keep it light and fun. I tell people I’m an author, but also add a little something extra – that I like Tim Tams (it’s a chocolate biscuit in Australia for those that don’t know). It just makes me seem more real and likeable (because EVERYONE likes Tim Tams don’t they?).

I’ve got a few different websites, so I usually change the web address to whatever I’m working on or promoting at the time. Right now that’s this writer blog as I work to build up a following here.

Automated Direct Messaging

Many Twitter programs will allow you to set up an auto DM so that as soon as someone follows you, you can send them an automated cheery greeting to say thanks for the follow and perhaps send them a link as well.

Please don’t do this. Most people view it as spammy and rude. You need to build up a relationship with your follows before you should market to them. People (me included) will unfollow you immediately if you auto DM us with your links.

Take the time to get to know someone first before trying to sell them something.

Sending Sales Messages

Obviously you are on Twitter because you want to market to your followers however you need to be very careful about this and not come across as too promotional. Generally most marketers follow the 90/10 rule.

That means 90% of your time you should be interacting with people, tweeting (or retweeting) interesting articles that you think your followers would find interesting or just writing down things that happen during your day.

Obviously you don’t want every tweet to be about how your cat just puked up a hairball, but adding a few human elements into your tweets makes you more likeable.

The majority of your time should be building relationships with people, so if someone responds to one of your tweets definitely tweet back to them and so on.

Only 10% of your tweets should be sales related. That’s right ONLY 10% (or even less). If you come across as too salesy then people will start to unfollow you or ignore you so you need to create that magic balance of being fun and interactive while only occasionally throwing in a ‘buy my book’ link.

In fact often it’s better not to even say ‘buy my book’ (unless it’s brand new on Amazon and you want people to go check it out) but rather just talk about it generally like “Just saw I had a great review on Amazon for my book, thanks @randomperson”.

More Soon

I’m running out of writing time (yes I write to a time limit – sorry about that) so I’m going to finish up here but there is still more to tell you about marketing on twitter including how to find your audience, choosing who to follow, your twitter background image, integrating twitter with your blog and much more.

I thought that I had finished my first indie nonfiction book. I briefed the designer on the cover design and sat down ready to do my first line editing run through. Usually I’m a pretty clean writer self editing and rewriting sentences as I go, so I didn’t really think that there would be too much to fix up. Sure I knew it was a little on the short side, but I thought the chapters and information flowed quite well together.

I was wrong.

On reading it I knew there was a lot missing. Some chapters felt unfinished and there was no warmth to the text.

Yes I know it’s a non-fiction book but I still believe that non fiction texts need warmth and likeability just like a fiction novel does.

The book sucks as is.

So I’m back in writing mode to try and fix it. Already it’s starting to look and sound better but I still have a lot of work to do.

Which got me to thinking, why are first drafts so bad? Of course some writers can crank out a book with minimal editing. Unfortunately I’m not one of them. I read somewhere once that the first draft of a book ALWAYS sucks, and while I’m not sure that is completely true – I need to go and light a fire under mine and add some depth to it.

Fortunately it’s starting to come together. I’m using ‘the formula’ for writing a good nonfiction book.

What is the nonfiction book formula?

It might be a little clichéd but the formula using goes 1) story about the concept to draw readers in 2) background about why concept is important/works to add credibility 3) explain the concept in detail – the ‘how to’ or ‘this is what you do’ part.

I realised what my book was lacking was a lot of background. Mainly with a story but also why the concept is important. I went straight in with ‘this is what you do’ and left it at that.

Even thought the ‘this is what you do’ is the most important part of the chapter, alone it can leave readers feeling unsatisfied. You need to sweeten up the text first so that readers can identify with the situation and be told how to solve it.

It’s a similar formula that many copywriters use on sales pages. Explain a relatable problem: “I used to suffer from bad acne”, why it needs fixing: “I couldn’t get a date” and then have the ‘product’ provide the solution “Once I tried ABC my face cleared up and now I’m dating again”.

So if you think your nonfiction needs some warmth, try the formula.

Start with a story, either you or someone else who has a problem, then explain the concept of the chapter and why it can fix the problem. And then of course explain the solution in a clear and easy to digest format.

It’s made writers and authors around the web start to shake in their boots. Good grief they cry, “the spammers are here, we are doomed!”

But are we really?

Let’s look at the facts in a little more detail in a second, but first – what exactly are we dealing with here?

Basically there are three types of Kindle spam.

1) The glut of low quality PLR content eBooks (which also includes free or public domain material being made into books),
2) Good selling books being rewritten/copied and sold as original, and
3) Basic plagiarism where authors works are being resold by others illegally.

Let’s look at each in detail and what it means for your business.

Low Quality PLR eBooks

These make up the bulk of the ‘Kindle Spam’ that is being reported. Generally someone will buy the rights to use content in the form of articles or eBooks for a price (or find it for free) and either use it as is or rewrite it slightly to make it ‘original’.

Most of the time the graphics and book covers are also sold with the content making it very easy to get something up and selling fast without doing much at all.

Nearly all the time these books are short (less than 50 pages) and full of ads. They are mostly sold at 0.99 cents.

So what does this mean for you?

Probably nothing. I can see no evidence whatsoever that these books are harming author sales. Even authors who use the 0.99 cent modelling are not being affected. Has it harmed the sales of John Locke or Joe Konrath or any other Kindle author? No – in fact they are doing better than ever.

Does a fake Gucci purse impact the sales of the real thing? No. Evidence has shown that it actually increases demand for the original. Do $2 shops full of junk products hurt the sales of major department stores – again no. There is room in the market for all levels of quality and price.

In fact these PLR books might even HELP the sales of your book because readers will seek out good quality books. (And it really is up to readers to distinguish what they think is good quality – not us).

How will readers know what is good quality or not? Generally by voting or reviewing the work in the Amazon rating system or downloading a sample to see the quality for themselves.

Besides, people who put up PLR ebooks to try and sell them have done nothing wrong. They purchased the rights to this content and have a legal right to use it as they want to.

Bottom line: While annoying for legitimate authors, I can see no evidence whatsoever that PLR ebooks hurts their business.

Rewritten copies of good selling eBooks

This is where someone will see what is selling well in the Kindle store and download it, only to rewrite the material, put a new title on it, a new cover and make it their own.

This is more a problem with nonfiction than it is with fiction (it’s much harder to rewrite a novel with plot points and characters than it is to rewrite information and facts).

But will it impact your sales?

Possibly not. Generally this takes some work to rewrite an entire book – something most ‘get rich quick’ authors are not willing to do (why rewrite something when you can buy an entire PLR book for $7).

They are also unlikely to get professional editing, take time to find beta readers or hire a proper cover designer.

And marketing – again that takes too much work and not likely to happen for fly by night rewriters who just want to get lots of books up.

Copying ideas and concepts is nothing new in the book industry. How often do you see one book about a new topic and then hundreds of similar books follow.

While they may not be original (or entirely ethical), if they make it different enough they still are not doing anything wrong. And you can’t copyright ideas, only content.

Bottom line: If it happens to you, then it’s normal to get mad but the best thing you can do is be flattered. They wouldn’t do it if you weren’t brilliant. And again I have seen no evidence that it has hurt an original author’s works. Sometimes it even helps bolster further sales as demand becomes higher for the topic at hand.

Someone copying your book and selling it under their name

This is what most authors fear. Someone stealing their book in its entirety and claiming it as their own.

This is plagiarism and it is illegal.

But it actually happens surprisingly less than you think it does. If you see your book being sold by someone else, a quick letter/email to Amazon will get the book taken down. Amazon doesn’t want to deal with copyright infringement and WILL take down plagiarised content fast. Usually within 24 hours.

Annoying but quite easy to deal with.

Much more likely is that you’ll find your eBook being passed around and downloaded for free. People who won’t even pay the small price and would rather use a peer to peer network to get it for no cost.

Well get used to it. The more popular you become the more likely this is to happen. And there isn’t much you can do about this.

But guess what? There is still no evidence that this free downloading will hurt your sales. The people who share these illegal copies were likely not going to be customers anyway, but what usually happens is that if your book is good people will talk. Word will get around. You’ll actually get more sales. See what happened with “Go the F**k to Sleep” – a free illegal PDF created enough buzz that the book became an instant bestselling book on Amazon.

This problem has been rife in the music industry and again has not impacted greatly on music sales. In fact one band ‘the grateful dead’ ENCOURAGED fans to download their music for free. It made them richer. Sounds like a hard concept to understand (why would giving away free content actually make more sales for them?) but it did.

I’m not suggesting that you make your book for free on your site and encourage others to download it and pass it around, (although many authors DO include free copies of their work on their blogs and it doesn’t hurt their bottom lines), all I’m saying is that it probably won’t hurt your sales.

In fact it probably helps it.

So there you go. The facts are that so far there has been no evidence that Kindle Spam is impacting the sales of legitimate author’s works.